The German Design Award-Newcomers 2014

The jury of the 2014 German Design Award has selected five young designers, who impressed with their outstanding achievements and great creative potential, as finalists for the Newcomer Award. They were selected from approximately 100 other nominees, who were proposed by representatives from German design academies and universities for the prize.

Christian Zanzotti - Newcomer Gold 2014

Since the beginning of 2013, Christian Zanzotti has operated his own studio, where he is active in the areas of product, furniture and automotive design. His focus is, among other things, on motorsport – here Zanzotti has already developed concept vehicles and engaged in the developments of lightweight design. Examples such as the urban bicycle “Coren” and an e-bike concept made of carbon were already produced.www.zanzotti.com

Coren2012Coren is a urban bicycle made of carbon fiber. The frame is made of very high tensile strength T1000 carbon fibres which are otherwise used almost solely in Formula 1 monocoques. Innovative for the bicycle sector are the avantgarde shape, and the design of the frame: super slim top and down tubes lend the coren a unique visual lightness. The overall weight shows that this lightness is also a fact: 6,800 grams.The design and the size of the frame are based on a new approach:The down tube, the top tube and the seat tube are fi tted together on an adjustable frame gauge. The bike owes its unique appearance particularly to the connection of the top tube and the seat tube, to the delicate cross-section and the faultless quality of the material and workmanship.Product design, art direction and graphics made by Christian Zanzotti.

E-Bike Concept2010Electric bicycle concept made of carbon fiber. Top grade materials such as carbon fiber, high-alloy aluminium and leather are passionately combined and presented in extraordinary shapes. The E-Bike consists almost entirely of components developed and manufacturedin Germany, all of which are calculated and designed with the most attention to detail.Power is delivered by a 1.2kW CM48 V hybrid engine, which is paired with a 17 Ah CM48 lithium ion battery (150 minutes full charging time and 124 miles maximum range). Three driving modes are available: manual, cruising (18.5 to 31 mph) and maximum (up to 62 mph). A small OLED display sits in front, right below the handle-bar, showing information such as battery status, charging cycles and current speed.

Studio Besau-Marguerre

The designers Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau established an interdisciplinary design studio together in Hamburg in 2011. They work in the areas of product design, visual communication, editorial design and styling, which frequently leads to extraordinary products and innovative ideas. The combining of unusual materials with a striking color design is characteristic of the Studio Besau-Marguerre.

MOABasket series of elastic yarn, 2010Client: Petite FritureMOA is a hand-made basket series with a surprisingly smooth texture and intense color, which combines traditional craftsmanship with modern manufacturing processes.The series was developed of a completely unique material combination of elastic yarn and resin which makes it possible to transform a formerly two-dimensional tissue in a three-dimensional form.Text: M.Christina Gabriel

Jan Filek

With his work “read/ability” Jan Filek inquires about the legibility of fonts. For this purpose, he draws on knowledge from neuroscience, readability research and experience with typography. A book was created, which not only addresses the topic of readability with regard to content, but is visually appealing and typographically multifaceted in terms of its design concept as well.www.janfilek.de

read/abilityüber lesbarkeit und typografieThe brain accomplishes incredible when written is read. Reading is a central cultural technique. But what happens during the reading? How do the characters have to be designed so that we recognize them? Is readability measurable?By combining the results from different disciplines designers will be given a deeper understanding for the reading process.Emerged from that a 192-page book about readability and typography was developed. The design concept of the book was deliberately flexible and visually appealing implemented to facilitate access to scientific literature. Different envelope variants celebrate the diversity of typography and enable the personalization of the book.

Thesis in the Department of Communication DesignFachhochschule Düsseldorf, 2012

Peter Schäfer

Peter Schäfer’s works connect objects, which are well know and used for a certain function, with an entirely new usability. Therefore, he creates a new innovative way of viewing them, disrupts the customary codes of our perception and challenges the viewer – for example with “Tape Pot,” a cup consisting of barrier tape, or with the work “Ad Hoc,” in which Schäfer combines classical pieces of furnishings to create a new scenario.www.peterschaefer.net

Ad Hoc2007The interior elements with which we share our lives are in their function conventionalized adamant: the chair signals sitting, the table putting down, the cabinet stacking and storing. With the help of a simple tool, the clamp radically overrides this minor side and togetherness. The classic set of pieces of the facility are not only torn from their traditional context, they are used for jointing, a kind of semi-finished for a spontaneous and permanent re-combining scenario.

Close to HomeAd Hoc_ClimbUpSideboardFoto: Frederik Busch

HfG KarlsruheAd Hoc_HockerBackFoto: Tina Schmid

Close to HomeAd Hoc_NeonLuxSchreibtischFoto: Frederik Busch

Tape Pot2011Until now tape was primarily known as packaging or as a repair material. But it is also like clay, glass or wattle, a kind of raw material from which you can shape the simplest way into all sorts of containers. The smart thing is that each shell is actually unique - even if it was transfered into the purely manual methods of automated production.Tape (black / yellow, red / white)22 x26 x26cmEdition 100 pieces

KkaarrllsTape Pot, black/yellow stripedFoto: Philipp Radowitz

KkaarrllsTape Pot, red/white stripedFoto: Philipp Radowitz

Cedric Vilim

Cedric Vilim often combines photography and graphic in his works. With the photographic documentation “Weite Suchen” (“Searching for Vastness”), for which he traveled through the east of Germany, he attempted to explore the ambivalence between the uneasiness of emptiness and the longing for vastness and nature.www.cedricvilim.com

Weite suchen / Searching for Wideness

"For my work "Searching for wideness" I went four months and over 3000 km through East Germany, to document the depopulation due to increasing migration and demographic change.In my artistic confrontation it's not just about to show that more and more villages and rural areas see themselves threatened in their existence, but also an attempt to explore the ambivalence between the discomfort of emptiness and longing for space and nature." Cedric Vilim

Kunst als Negation"Art as negation", is the thesis of art and media theorist Lars Mextorf, published in the publishing house Silke Schreiber.The content of the thesis deals with Minimal Art, an art form, in contrast to the Abstract Expressionists with its impulsive and gestural expression particularly distinguished in their effect mainly available via the material aesthetics, the relationship of the objects to the room, the lighting effect and the strict to obtain reduced order.The task was to create a book that makes the characteristic properties of minimal art in the design visible to the reader while providing a high utility value.

The German Design Award is the premium prize from the German Design Council and is not identical to the Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany tendered by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology.